Splitrock is an abandoned townsite in Beaver Bay Township, Lake County,

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

, United States; located at the mouth of the

Split Rock River The Split Rock River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 7, 2012 river of Minnesota, in the United States. It drains a small watershed of about on the North Shore ...

. Splitrock was inhabited from 1899 to 1906 as a

company town A company town is a place where all or most of the stores and housing in the town are owned by the same company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schoo ...

to house workers for a

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucksSplit Rock Lighthouse State Park Split Rock Lighthouse State Park is a state park of Minnesota on the North Shore (Lake Superior), North Shore of Lake Superior. It is best known for the picturesque Split Rock Lighthouse, one of the most photographed lighthouses in the United St ...

. The abandoned townsite is located northeast of the city of Two Harbors.

History

Splitrock was developed as a logging camp by the Split Rock Lumber Company, a subsidiary of the Merrill and Ring Lumber Company. About 350 men worked in the Split Rock River valley felling

red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–750 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a seconda ...

and

white pine ''Pinus'', the pines, is a genus of approximately 111 extant tree and shrub species. The genus is currently split into two subgenera: subgenus ''Pinus'' (hard pines), and subgenus ''Strobus'' (soft pines). Each of the subgenera have been further ...

. The lumber company controlled the town's

harbor A harbor (American English), or harbour (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be moored. The term ''harbor'' is often used interchangeably with ''port'', which is ...

, railroad,

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

dock, and store (which included a post office). Early maps show the community as Splitrock, Split Rock, Split Rock Point, or Waterville. The company built a

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

long to carry cut logs down to the river mouth, where they were dumped into the water from a trestle platform. Although the railroad never connected to any other lines, it was incorporated as the Split Rock and Northern Railroad to qualify for a

common carrier A common carrier in common law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in some civil law (legal system), civil law systems,Encyclopædia Britannica CD 2000 "Civil-law public carrier" from "carriage of goods" usually called simply a ''carrier ...

tax break. The logs were sluiced from a dammed area at the river mouth into the lake, where they were rounded up into rafts and towed to a

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

Duluth Duluth ( ) is a Port, port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County, Minnesota, St. Louis County. Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, the city is a hub for cargo shipping. The population ...

by the company's

tugboat A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, suc ...

''Gladiator''. Unusually, the ''Gladiator'' stocked

carrier pigeon The homing pigeon is a variety of domestic pigeon (''Columba livia domestica''), selectively bred for its ability to find its way home over extremely long distances. Because of this skill, homing pigeons were used to carry messages, a practic ...

s to carry distress messages to the company office. By 1906 the operation had cut of lumber, netting a highly successful profit of $863,454. With most of the valuable timber gone, logging operations ceased and the town and railroad were dismantled the following year. The cutover land suffered further from multiple

forest fires A forest fire A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a bushfire ( in Au ...

.State of Minnesota, Department of Natural Resources. ''Split Rock Lighthouse State Park''. September 2009.

/ref> The only obvious vestige of the town are pilings from the wharf and train trestle, which was about long and wide, still visible jutting from the water at the mouth of the Split Rock River.

References

{{authority control Company towns in Minnesota Former populated places in Lake County, Minnesota Ghost towns in Minnesota Populated places established in 1899 Logging communities in the United States